{"id":4722,"date":"2020-08-24T11:43:29","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T09:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/?p=4722"},"modified":"2020-08-24T11:43:30","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T09:43:30","slug":"a-challenging-tornado-forecast-in-slovakia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/a-challenging-tornado-forecast-in-slovakia\/","title":{"rendered":"A Challenging Tornado Forecast in Slovakia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tornado forecasting can be very challenging, especially in low CAPE – high shear environments and when lower tropospheric shear is only locally enhanced. Such was the case of an F1 tornado that hit the village of Lek\u00e1rovce in eastern Slovakia on 3 October 2018. This tornado is the main subject of a paper \u201cA Challenging Tornado Forecast in Slovakia<\/a>\u201d that has been recently published in the journal Atmosphere. The study was led by Miroslav \u0160inger from Comenius University and Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute in Bratislava and co-authored by Tom\u00e1\u0161 P\u00fa\u010dik from ESSL.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Roof damaged by the tornado and a toppled concrete cross. Author: Martin \u017dec. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Authors of the study attempted to reconstruct the\nenvironment leading up to the tornado based on the observational datasets and\ncompared it with the model data that was available to forecasters in the\nmorning hours before the tornado. One of the main aims of the paper was to show\nwhether observational data or the higher resolution run of the local model\nwould improve the ability to identify conditions favourable for tornadogenesis.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tornado occurred in the early afternoon hours underneath strong west-northwesterly mid to upper tropospheric flow at the flank of a deep low-pressure system. Enhanced lower tropospheric moisture combined with mid-tropospheric lapse rates of 6.5 K\/km allowed for a build-up of marginal CAPE reaching 200 \u2013 300 J\/kg. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Model forecast of 3 October 2018 12:00 UTC (a) Average lapse rate in 900\u2013600 hPa layer (black isolines) (\u00b0C\u00b7km\u22121) and dew-point temperature at 2 m (color scale) (\u00b0C); (b) surface-based convective available potential energy (CAPE; color scale) (J\u00b7kg\u22121) and deep-layer shear (wind barbs: full barb, 5 m\u00b7s\u22121; half barb, 2.5 m\u00b7s\u22121; flag, 25 m\u00b7s\u22121). Country names shown in italics; tornado location highlighted by blue star.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But while the deep-layer shear was very strong, models predicted a decrease in 0-1 km shear between morning and early afternoon hours with surface wind veering from East to West. However, easterly wind direction persisted over eastern Slovakia for much longer, yielding strong lower-tropospheric shear as the storms developed in the afternoon. Study shows that using both observational datasets and the higher resolution version of the local area model would alert the forecaster to the presence of strong lower tropospheric shear over the area of interest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hodographs representing the environment before tornadogenesis based on observational datasets (red), model forecast available to the forecasters (black), and the experimental higher resolution run (blue). Crossed circles represent the storm-motion based on Bunker`s method, orange represents the real vector derived from the radar data. Values of low-level wind shear (LLS) and storm relative helicity (SRH) in 0\u20131 and 0\u20133 km layers for individual hodographs are shown in top-right corner.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

More details can be found here: \u0160inger, M.; P\u00fa\u010dik, T. A Challenging Tornado Forecast in Slovakia. <\/a>Atmosphere<\/a><\/em> <\/a>2020<\/a><\/strong>, <\/a>11<\/a><\/em>, 821. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tornado forecasting can be very challenging, especially in low CAPE – high shear environments and when lower tropospheric shear is only locally enhanced. Such was the case of an F1 tornado that hit the village of Lek\u00e1rovce in eastern Slovakia … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4722"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4729,"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4722\/revisions\/4729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.essl.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}